The Metamorphosis of Hunger

Brenda Kahn & Womanrock.com
by René Vasicek (October 2000)

I first saw Brenda Kahn perform in early 1999, by accident,
at the Sidewalk Cafe in the East Village. She was one of several acts in
an all-female lineup that included indie rock whisperer Heather Eatman.
It was Eatman I was there to see-- she caught my curiosity some months
earlier at the Knitting Factory. And even Eatman was a mere fortuity; my
wife and I were at the Factory to see our friend Emilyís husband, Matt
Keating. Yet somehow, in New York, all roads lead to Brenda Kahn.

Brenda blew me away. I was hooked on Brenda within
the first few riffs of "Spoon", a comic and tragically-hip song about a
girlís addiction to a boy who also has an addiction-- heroine. That night,
she captivated her audience with stark and surreal imagery-- an alchemy
of memory and the imagination. Songs like "Mojave Winters" conjured the
surrealism of Salvador Dali as she sang about a homeless manís enduring
dream of growing lemon trees in a desert to avoid the bitter New York winter.
Brenda feeds the hunger of urban intellectuals as they sit in darkness,
enveloped in cigarette smoke, sipping the English ales of solitude, loneliness
and despair. I knew then, that she was the chosen one.

Brenda agreed to meet with me to discuss WOMANROCK.com
and the release of her new record Hunger. I ask her to suggest a
place somewhere in bohemia-- we meet at Limbo, a coffee shop on 3rd Street
and Avenue A in the East Village.

I emerge from the underground on a sleepy Sunday
morning. I walk beneath black fire escapes and past a painting of Bruce
Lee on a flaking brick wall. I find the coffee shop, walk in, and look
around for Brenda. I spot a girl I think is Brenda, but I begin to doubt
myself. Is it her? No. I scan the room again, and conclude I am early.
She walks in a few minutes later and unleashes her trademark mane of hair
from a multi-colored wool knit hat. I walk up to her and tell her I am
the writer. She smiles and says, "Yeah, I was wondering how I was going
to recognize you."

The coffee shop is crowded, our prospects for getting
a table look grim--this is the cultural journalistís worst nightmare. We
ask one girl if we can share her table, but she says only if we donít talk--
she is studying for an exam. A table against the wall finally opens up;
we grab a couple of chairs and I pull out a pen and a yellow legal pad.

Brenda sits relaxed, mellow, without worry, her back
is to the wall as she flips through the tattered pages of a Village
Voice that someone left lying on the table. Occasionally, Brenda looks
up-- azure-blue eyes gaze through the bronze highlights of tightly-curled
cinnamon hair. Dressed in army-green dungarees, she is petite and at first
strikes me as the unlikely source of acidic lyrics that sometimes burn
like lye in the eye. I ask her if I can get her anything from the coffee
bar, and she says, "Chamomile tea with a little honey." Chamomile tea?
Is this the same woman whose seven-inch single "I Donít Sleep, I Drink
Coffee Instead" inspired Chaos Records, a now-defunct imprint of Columbia
Records, to sign her to the majors back in 1992? Of course she is, and
is not, the Brenda Kahn of seven years ago-- a lot has happened since then.

When I get back with the tea, Brenda tells me how
her second record Epiphany in Brooklyn (Chaos/ Columbia) sold some
40,000 copies-- not bad for a woman in a genre that critics have variously
described as punk rock, post-punk,urban folk and anti-folk.
And Brenda Kahn is the first to admit that working with a major label gave
her extraordinary experience and exposure-- she toured all over the world
and opened shows for some of the very musicians who inspired her including
The Kinks, David Byrne, Bob Dylan, and her close friend, the late Jeff
Buckley, to whom she dedicates her new record entitled Hunger.

With the Sony machine, she got to hang out with the
likes of David Pirnier, the lead singer of Soul Asylum. While attending
the Sony Convention in Minneapolis, they talked about collaborating and
even cut a short demo together entitled Sixty-Second Critic. The
song was inspired by a hotel survey they found while partying in their
rooms; the paper form requested that guests evaluate the quality of service.
The race for the presidency was underway, Ross Perot and George Bush squabbled
over the air waves-- Pirnier and Kahn crafted a political song with jabbing
sarcastic lyrics of political apathy like "Ainít gonnaí pull that lever."
Brenda lost touch with Pirnier around the time he started dating Winona
Ryder.

Sony was good to Brenda, but in January of 1995,
something went mysteriously wrong-- Chaos was disintegrated and Brenda
Kahn was dropped two weeks before the scheduled release of her third record
(her second with Columbia) Destination Anywhere. Brendaís contract
with Chaos called for a "two-firm deal" -- meaning that Chaos/ Columbia
was obligated to make two of Brenda Kahnís records. Straight out of Franz
Kafkaís The Trial, Brenda K. was informed that Columbia had in fact
satisfied its legal obligation-- the contract stipulated that they had
agreed to produce two records, not necessarily release two
records.

Columbia Records refused to give Brenda Kahn the
rights to Destination Anywhere-- she was also prohibited from recording
any of its songs for a period of five years. Instead, Columbia licensed
Destination Anywhere to Shanachie Records, which eventually released
the record in 1996. While that album was on furlough, Brenda was not to
be deterred-- she released a second vinyl seven-inch, "Hey Romeo", which
charted in Rolling Stone.

As I sit across from Brenda, I remind her that she
is rapidly approaching the ten-year anniversary of the release of her first
album, Goldfish Donít Talk Back, which was released on a Brooklyn
independent label (Comm3) in 1990. She laughs, and says, "Yeah, itís weird
that I have this career-- whatever that is." At thirty-two, Brenda Kahn
can already look back on a music career that has produced five albums and
spans the entire post-Cold War period. Had Brenda ever thought about quitting
the music biz? Sure, she nods her head in the affirmative, saying that
indeed there are those moments. But whenever she tries to imagine what
she will do instead, she comes up with a complete blank.

Brenda lives on the Lower East Side, but is originally
from New Jersey. The town she grew up in is a stoneís throw from where
Patti Smith was raised, an artist that Brenda credits as a trailblazer
in womenís rock. Brenda did some time in Brooklyn too, so itís been a long
time since anyone called her a Jersey Girl. She could, however, be called
a Jerzy Girl-- her dark, at times sexually subversive lyrics, are reminiscent
of the literary vignettes in Jerzy Kosinkiís Steps.

Brenda, like many musicians, has recognized that
the web is the future of the music industry. She snagged the domain name
WOMANROCK.COM back in 1996-- but it wasnít until she got together with
friend, fan and web designer Geoff Purchase of Toronto, Canada that the
site took on its present form. "Geoff was going to school and learning
HTML," Brenda explains, "and he needed a project." That project became
WOMANROCK.COM which initially served as Brenda Kahnís personal homepage.
Brenda moved her homepage to another location within WOMANROCK.com, allowing
for the birth of the WOMANROCK.com online magazine which publishes columns,
features and interviews that focus on women in music, art, film and the
written word.

As the magazineís editor, Brenda encourages submissions
which educate women on the basic business skills necessary for an artistís
survival. WOMANROCK.com also functions as a promotional organization which
can bring attention to an artistís work by organizing arts-based multimedia
events. WOMANROCK.com presents an on-going series called Planet Girl--
I saw one show at CBGBís Downstairs Lounge which featured musical performances
by Brenda Kahn, Debby Schwartz, The Fuzzy Comets, Rachel McCartney and
Too Cynical to Cry. During the concert, hair cutters, henna tattoo artists,
fortune tellers, manicurists and massage therapists provided their creative
services for free. The concert series rotates between New York, Pittsburgh
(where the idea was born), and Philadelphia. But it looks like the series
will soon have to change its name-- apparently a teen web zine claims trademark
on Planet Girl, and now WOMANROCK.com is asking its fans to come up with
a new name for the event.

If at first, WOMANROCK.com focuses more on music
than other arts, that is because music is what Brenda knows. Eventually,
Brenda would like to see WOMANROCK.COM become an indie label that puts
out compilation records of women musicians. "Women are coming into their
own," she says. "This generation-- not my generation, but the generation
after me," Brenda explains, "is the first generation to really have positive
women role models." She acknowledges that when she was growing up there
was Blondie, Chrissie Hynde and Patti Smith-- "but they were rock stars!"
Brenda exclaims.

In the era of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Madeleine
Albright, Xena the Warrior Princess, Janet Reno, Felicity, Ally McBeal,
and Joey Potter of Dawsonís Creek-- Brenda Kahn wants WOMANROCK.com
to move beyond women in rock. She wants to create a website that rejects
the solitary experience of sitting home, alone, and surfing the net. She
wants "to create communities that are events-based" and envisions a big
media-arts event every couple months where people actually physically gather
and get to know one another.

Double-click on Brenda Kahn within WOMANROCK.com
and you will find yourself at Brendaís personal website. It is here that
cybernauts can sample songs from all of Brendaís records through the technology
of Real Audio. Real Audio, like MP3, is a digital audio compression format
which enables users to play music on their computers.

(It is the MP3 format which has music executives
ripping their hair out trying to figure out how they will prevent music
piracy over the Internet. What distinguishes the MP3 format from Real Audio
is that MP3 files can be downloaded from the Internet and stored in a personal
computer. These files can also be downloaded and played on portable MP3
players similar to the Sony Walkman and Sony Discman. The use of an MP3
is legal so long as the copyright holder has granted permission. But there
is little to stop people from encoding MP3ís from CDís without authorization
and trading them over the Internet. Artistsí reactions to the technology
has generally been to embrace MP3 and grant permission to sites like MP3.com
to post their music on the web. The eclectic pop-duo They Might Be Giants
released their last album Long Tall Weekend exclusively on MP3.)

Brendaís website also features video files which
allows fans to play her music videos using RealPlayer. Fans can add themselves
to Brenda Kahnís mailing list by firing an e-mail to her. Order forms can
be printed out for Brendaís new record Hunger-- as well as earlier
recordings, a compilation video, and a short experimental film featuring
Brendaís music.

Brendaís homepage is a modern-day multimedia memoir.
One can follow the emotional journey and evolution of Brenda Kahn as an
artist by sampling her songs, reading her biography, playing her videos,
enlarging her digital photos, and skimming through her press clips. Appealing
to several senses at once, the electronic information depicts the various
angles and perspectives that create the character and identity of Brenda
Kahn.

If Brendaís earlier songs were loud and angry shotgun
blasts, then her latest album Hunger uses silence and quiet with
equal effect. She is an acoustic La Femme Nikita, a sniper on the
roof with a silencer on the muzzle of her laser-sighted rifle. When she
takes aim, she does not miss.

Three of the songs on Hunger explore the boundary
between spoken word and song. The first such song, entitled "Mexico One,"
opens the record and features Brendaís spoken word accompanied solely by
the standing bass of Ernest Adzentoivich, whose bow is ubiquitous throughout
the record:

Dreams, the infallible reality of our unconscious.
The Mexican cigars, in utero you drank wine. And now, only cervezas. The
Cuban tobacco sickly sweet against the ice blue water like melted margaritas,
grenadine and mouthwash. Floating topless, the sunburn scar on your thigh.
She reaches like the Climatis scaling the adobe walls, its yellow flowers
like floral constellation, he stretches across the table and brushes my
hand reaching for a beer.

On the second track, "Messiah," Brenda breaks out the
acoustic guitar and strums along as she sings the chorus:

Now that heís goneHeís the chosen oneI keep my best shoes onFor when the Messiah comes

She slips into Light like a silk negligee-- occupying
the space of the song, wearing the delicate breath of each word. "Hunger,"
the title track follows, and opens with the long strains of Adzentoivichís
bow and exhibits Brenda Kahnís ability to craft songs that gradually expand
until they swallow the entire universe.

Brenda Kahn is transcendent when she writes about
disillusioned women. She has an uncanny ability to unearth and expose emotion
as something crude, raw and naked, but ultimately and always true. In "Queen
of Distance," Brenda sings,

And she stumbles through the wreckagelike a harlequin of blissWrites her name in every taxiLonging for the things sheís missedAnd steered by fortunes of her past livesShe sees road signs in the mist.

Sheís the queen of distance.

In "Christopher Says," Brenda confronts the impossible
situation women face when they try to fill the void left behind by a previous
lover:

Christopher says,There was a girl I lovedAn angel in my heartShe was a perfect doveAnd I would have thrownmyself to sea.If only she loved me.

Christopher says,I wonít be needing youThe sun is shining greyAnd I think youíve doneyour bestNow get up and get dressed.

The production on the record is phenomenal, particularly
in light of the fact that the record was recorded live in two days and
mixed on the third day at 60 Cycle in Coney Island. In addition to the
standing bass of Ernest Adzentoivich, additional guitars were played by
Tim Bright who recorded the album, and Kevin March on drums for "Christopher
Says."

Brenda Kahnís music recently collided with film.
Her experimental guitar and feedback can be heard in Seven Days Til
Sunday, a short film directed by Reynold Reynolds and Patrick Jolley.
The film took first place at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin in March
of 1999. In January of that same year, it was featured at the Sundance
Film Festival and won best experimental short film at the Underground Music
Festival in New York City in 1998. Brenda was asked to select the music
for the soundtrack to the feature-film Follow Me Outside, which
is to be directed by John Sullivan.

While on the subject of film, I ask Brenda what recent
films have made an impression on her-- she smiles, glances left, then right,
to see if anyone is listening-- The Matrix, she whispers, "I loved
it!" Brenda Kahn is passionate about the film genres of Kung Fu and science
fiction-- both of which are fused together in The Matrix starring
Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne. Brenda suddenly becomes much more
animated as she dissects the various styles of Kung Fu practiced by Bruce
Li, Jet Li, Chow Yun Fat, and Jackie Chan. She performs some Kung Fu for
me at the table-- she takes an open hand and pulls it back slowly until
the fingers of her hand touch to form a single point of concentration.
I am a little frightened and wonder what is going to happen next. Brenda
returns from her Kung Fu trance-- I breathe a sigh of relief. Brenda says
The Matrix was brilliant in that it draws inspiration from all the
Kung Fu styles.

Brendaís friend, Ariel, comes in toward the end of
the interview. She says that there is a massive demonstration underway
down the street. The protesters, led by an organization called Reclaim
the Streets, are railing against the cityís plan to sell over one hundred
community gardens throughout the five boroughs. "Itís a good place to be
if you want to get arrested," Ariel declares. Brenda ponders the information
and smiled an American dissidentís smile and says subversively, "That could
be good for me."